


they got machines to keep us alive

by KilltheDJ



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Slice of Life, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:27:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29829765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KilltheDJ/pseuds/KilltheDJ
Summary: Life in the Zones isn't all that entertaining, once you get used to it. Sometimes, your day is running out of gas in the middle of the desert with a kid napping in the backseat, asshole Exterminators who just want to see if you get gunned down, and a Zonerunner you don't like saving your ass.
Relationships: Jet Star & Party Poison (Danger Days)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	they got machines to keep us alive

**Author's Note:**

> cws: graphic violence, death, gore, injury, - pretty much everything that happens in a firefight with draculoids.

“You ready for a firefight?” 

“Nothin’ fuckin’ better to do, is there?” Poison grins, yanking a pair of battered fingerless gloves off the top of the Trans Am’s dashboard. The engine’s still humming beneath him, but it’s in park, and he’s not turning it off. 

Maybe keeping the car on isn’t the best for the  _ battery,  _ but when there’s a blaster pointed at your chest with a cruel white grin crooked two shades beyond lowlight and you’re running on technic nylon? 

Yeah, keep the car on. 

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” Jet laughs, though there’s an air of authority surrounding them as they push open the passenger side door with a quiet  _ hiss;  _ they’re no stranger to the death disco they’re about to cause. 

Bloodstains never come out of clothes. Shame. 

Poison’s no Undergrad, either, and he’s quick to follow; though he doesn’t have the same leisure walk as Jet does, stepping out of the car to face two Crow vans with Dracs practically falling on top of each other. 

Twenty, tops. 

They don’t have the best odds. 

The Trans Am’s gas tank is running on empty and there’s a sleeping little girl on the floor of the backseat, one that Better Living so desperately wants to get their talons into so they can snap her neck and call it a day, another masked weapon crawling the streets at night, like they did to everyone before her. 

That’s  _ not  _ happening. 

“Almost wish Kobra were here,” Poison hums, and he sounds a hell of a lot more confident than he feels, hip cocked to the side with his blaster lowered, standing by Jet - who’s  _ leaning  _ against the hood of the Am and the semi-fresh paint that still, somehow, needs a touch-up. 

There are two Crows standing opposite them, just as leisure, as casual, as though this isn’t where rebels go to die on their brightest days and darkest nights, the constellations hiding the bodies from the prying eyes of animals that don’t exist anymore. 

“Yeah, he’d love a rematch with you two,” Jet shrugs, staring the Crows down. 

The Crows are easy to identify but harder to get rid of.  _ Code Sprawl  _ and  _ Code Flare  _ and they have it out for Kobra; gave him a broken nose and a broken arm with a blast that barely scraped his arm last time. 

“So he can get stuck in a body bag?” Flare asks, raising a brow. The white domino mask across her face contorts her expressions, makes it harder to figure out what she’s thinking, but it’s not like she’s thinking much of anything. Loyal to the company, born and raised in monotone. 

The orange hair on her head is just to  _ mock  _ everything a fucking Killjoy stands for, and she knows it as well as they do. 

“It’s not like you’ve ever caught him before,” Poison says, dryly, and that’s when he brings his blaster level with his eye and fixes his stance. 

This is a  _ firefight  _ and it should be treated as such, the Dracs looming closer, barely held back by the orders they’d been given.

That’s what Draculoids  _ are.  _ Fearful, terrified, mindless,  _ rapid  _ shells of human beings, no thoughts of their own than the constant stink of  _ fear,  _ and with a  _ snap,  _ Sprawl releases them. 

The Dracs are easy enough to take out on their own. They lack coordination and skill but make up for it in numbers, and Poison’s finger is cramping up on the trigger of his blaster and they have ten feet between  _ them  _ and the Dracs and that’s not enough. 

“They’re like a hydra, aren’t they?” Sprawl shouts, more  _ calls,  _ from the other side of the hoard, no doubt leaning against her pristine white van, in her white jumpsuit that should, by all means, be stained with blood. 

Jet’s on top of the Trans Am’s hood, covering Poison’s left, double-wielding with Ghoul’s old blaster that  _ only  _ works for Jet, and it’s good, it’s okay, they can manage it, but they can’t manage it with half-charged battery packs and Poison’s is blinking angry red at him. 

“Jet?” Poison calls, not allowing the panic to seep into his voice, because - because  _ the Girl.  _ She’s in the backseat. 

This firefight isn’t going to  _ end  _ in any neon blood across the sand, not when she’s at stake, not while Poison’s heart is still beating, but there’s a ray of light right past his eye and he can’t  _ see _ , fuck, fuck, he can’t  _ see.  _

Poison doubles over, scrunching his eyes shut from the searing pain of a fucking  _ ray gun blast  _ barely missing his  _ head  _ and he’s on the ground, and he doesn’t remember falling to the ground, but that’s not something he can help.

There’s not enough time to get up. 

With him on the ground, Jet’s got no cover, and Poison’s going to be  _ pissed  _ if the windshield gets broken,  _ again,  _ and - And he can do damage from  _ here.  _

His blaster doesn’t have much of a charge left, twenty shots at most, and his baseball bat is curled up with the Girl - she uses it like a  _ teddy bear,  _ it’s  _ weird,  _ but the Crows can’t  _ know  _ that she’s with them. If they  _ did,  _ they’d fight twice as hard, and Poison can’t have that. 

His aim is shaky with one ear and the  _ burning  _ on his ear that doesn’t feel right, feels like it has sand on it mixing with blood and he can’t hear out of that ear all too well, either, and it doesn’t matter because it’s hard  _ not  _ to hit something with the hoard in front of them. 

It’s almost  _ funny,  _ watching Dracs trip over the corpses of their predecessors just to meet the same fate seconds later. Like dominoes, but with more blood. 

It works. 

The blinding yellow clashing with the darkness in his left eye is starting to fade, and he’s halfway under the Trans Am, now; the Dracs aren’t smart enough to crouch down, barely smart enough to press the trigger of the ray guns that always die with them. 

It’s normal at this point. The lights, the action, the  _ smell  _ of burnt flesh, the rubber masks littering the ground, the  _ sound  _ of decay sped up a couple of hundred years between them, the  _ adrenaline  _ piercing through his veins that means he only has a couple of minutes before he’s exhausted. 

_ Sprawl & Flare.  _ They’re the real targets. 

They’re just fucking with Poison and Jet, because they have the time, because they’ve already ghosted enough Killjoys this month to meet their quota, because they  _ want  _ to, and that pisses Poison off. 

Maybe he shouldn’t be staggering to his feet, scraping his calf against the metal framework of the ‘Am, but he does anyway and Jet fires a blast straight through the ear of the nearest Drac. 

There are only five left, now - with the bodies and the angle, it looked like a lot more on the ground. Huh. 

Guess they’re the  _ Fabulous  _ Killjoys for a reason, after all. 

Sprawl doesn’t look all too alarmed, standing in the exact same place she was beforehand, and Flare’s leaning against  _ her  _ respective transport with a less-than-smug look on her face. Almost  _ worry,  _ if she was allowed emotions. 

Jet takes out  _ five  _ Dracs with  _ four  _ shots and never breaks eye contact with Flare. They haven’t done that since they got their eye taken out, but it looks mostly like an accident. “It reeks of Crow out here, don’t you think, Pois?” 

“Have to say I agree,” Poison hums, though he knows he doesn’t look put together; that he’s sporting a new haircut and a burning ear that’s gone mostly numb, blood dripping uncomfortably warm down his neck. 

And his still racing heart. Yeah, that too. 

Sprawl  _ seethes,  _ a dog on a leash. “You don’t have your entire crew. Your fingertips are  _ neon,  _ freaks.” 

Poison doesn’t know why that’s supposed to be a jab, but Sprawl’s right; there’s neon green and blue and purple painting his fingers; mostly his trigger finger and then around the hilt of the blaster. Ah. So he  _ is  _ running on technic nylon.

Great. He hopes his blaster doesn’t blow up in his face. He just painted it. 

“And?” Jet says, evenly, without missing a beat; they don’t look all too worse for wear, save for the tear in their jeans that’s stained darker than it’s supposed to be, and  _ fuck  _ does Poison hope they still keep the First Aid in the trunk. “It’s a cat and mouse game. The mouse won. Get  _ out  _ of here.” 

Maybe they know that Poison and Jet don’t have much to go on other than blind hope, and that’s what makes a Killjoy more dangerous than anything under the sun. Maybe they have to make curfew before they get their titles stripped. Maybe they’re simply bored of their escapade and blood trial. 

Either way, Flare pops a stick of bubblegum in her mouth, mock orange hair in her eyes, and grins. “We’ll be seeing you soon, of course. It was nice to play.” 

“You sound like my ex-boyfriend,” Poison deadpans, and that’s the end of that. 

That’s the end of that, and Poison and Jet don’t move a muscle until Sprawl and Flare are in their transports, completely abandoning the corpses lying in front of the ‘Am in a half-moon, and are driving back into the horizon. 

“We still don’t have any fucking gas,” Poison scowls, glancing at the car behind him. No gas is an issue. The sun’s going to set soon, which means that the temperature’s going to drop soon, and while Poison and Jet can probably manage with their jackets, they lent all their blankets to Ghoul and he still hasn’t given them back. 

And, you know, child. The child that is far more sensitive to temperature changes and far more  _ fragile  _ than them, not too worn out by the desert yet, the entire flame rather than the spark of one. 

(The Fabulous Killjoys, sure, but they’re nothing compared to what she’s going to be. Poison knows that. He knows the  _ others  _ know that. Children are something rare, something to protect, and even then, the Girl is something else.) 

“Let me guess,” Jet says dryly, sliding down the hood of the ‘Am and briefly glancing in the windshield. “Ghoul’s still got your radio?” 

“... We need to stop letting Ghoul borrow things.” 

“We need to stop letting Ghoul borrow things,” Poison agrees, but they’re no further along now than they were five minutes ago, and his vision’s going a little spotty in his left eye again, and that’s not usual, he doesn’t think. 

And Jet’s looking at him funny. “What?” Poison says, though there isn’t much bite to it. 

Jet groans, their head in their hands. “Your fucking  _ ear.  _ Your ear, and my leg, and the lack of gas and blankets.” 

Oh. Oh  _ no.  _

Jet mentioned their  _ ear.  _ Which means that that pleasant numbness is fading - as is the adrenaline from earlier - and that  _ burns,  _ burns so much that Poison sort-of wants to curl up and cry, but he can’t do that when they have problems to solve. “How bad is it?” 

With a wince, Jet speaks, which means that they’re being nice to not freak Poison out. “It looks, uh, like someone stuck it in the microwave too long. I guess you have an undercut now.” 

“I don’t want an  _ undercut.”  _

No, no, his hair was short on one side and long on the other. That’s what made it  _ his  _ hair; that, and being Party Poison red, which might as well be a trademark. 

“Nothing we can do about it, other than wait or see how long the Trans Am’ll drive.” 

Well, they’re  _ fucked.  _

_ 

“I hate you,” Poison says, for perhaps the fourth time in about two minutes, arms crossed and half his vision still spinning, for better or worse. (For worse.) 

Cherri Cola, of all people, grins smugly. “Sure as shit you do and you say  _ thank you  _ this time.” 

Poison does not want to say thank you. Poison actually wants to say  _ fuck you, I had that handled,  _ but he was sitting in the cold risking an infection in his ear because Jet didn’t want him snuggling the damn kid when he was injured or something like that. 

And  _ Cherri Cola  _ just  _ has  _ to be a damn decent person and came around to see the damage at the firefight. And offered to bandage him up. And offered some gas - for a decent price, but not the best - and offered a couple of blankets. 

“Damn you,” he says, instead of anything on his mind, and Cherri  _ must  _ be a mind-reader or something because he simply pats Poison’s head and gestures to the couch in the middle of the  _ dirty  _ shack they’re in. 

“You want a lollipop too?” 

“I want you to shut the fuck and get some gas.” 

“You’re not driving at night with  _ Flare  _ on the prowl, or injured. That’s a dumb move and you know it.” 

“Jet can’t drive!” 

Cherri nods. That much is true - Jet can’t drive because they got a graze of a blast and it hurts when they move their leg, which means that Poison probably doesn’t want Jet in charge of the brake pedal. At night. 

“You’re not driving, and I’m not staying,” Poison says stubbornly, because he  _ is  _ stubborn and Cherri Cola’s an ass and Poison doesn’t want  _ any  _ comments on his hair, because he knows it’s coming. 

“I can drive!”

Poison’s never pivoted so quickly in his life, drinking in the dirty pajamas and the toothy grin and the  _ flame  _ in her eyes. The child. The child who doesn’t know how to drive. 

Well, it’s either teach the Girl how to drive a little early, or… stay with Cherri Cola, and… With Poison and Jet… 

“Yeah, Girlie, let’s see how you do.” 

_ 

She mixes up the brake pedal and the gas four times, barely reaches the pedals, can’t quite see over the steering wheel, and can’t tell North from South to save her life. It takes all night and  _ way  _ more gas than it needs to, but they get home. 

Poison gets to  _ nap,  _ and Jet gets to deal with Ghoul’s exasperation and loud,  _ “You let her do what?! She can’t reach the goddamn pedals! With Flare around?” _

**Author's Note:**

> the girl ends up getting driving lessons, after that, by jet, and later by kobra; at the time, she was too small to actually, properly sit on a motorbike, so it had to wait until she was a little older. 
> 
> poison doesn't actually hate cherri, and he doesn't know why he doesn't like cherri, because cherri helps them out a lot; it's because of a meeting gone wrong a couple years back that he doesn't remember and shouldn't remember, if he wants to keep his head on straight. 
> 
> the undercut was never meant to be poison's "look", but it was easier to keep it short on both sides after that rather than try to let it grow past the awkward phase, and his vision and hearing still randomly block out on him,


End file.
